Roadmaster, Columbus Ohio

Hey Skillett,

I graduated from Roadmaster Columbus on June 20, and will say that I thought it was a very good school.

The instructors were genuinely interested in seeing the students get the most out of the school. We had a couple of people in our class who had a LOT of trouble with almost every aspect of driving, and there were days where an instructor would take them and spend all day just with them to help them get through what they needed to learn. In the end, they both graduated and got their CDLs, and I really didn't think it would be possible for them.

I ended up taking a job with Werner (I'm about 3/4 of the way through their training program now), and I felt like I was totally prepared for what was expected of me at Werner.

All in all, if I had to give them a grade, I would give Roadmaster Columbus a solid A.

Just my two cents, for what it's worth.

-Willy

 

No problem. And don't stress over the alley docking. By the time you leave there, you'll have done it at least 100 times, and you'll be able to do it with your eyes closed.

The one thing you get practice doing more than anything else are what they call 'skills', which are straight-line backing, offset backing, parallel parking, and alley docking. And believe me, at the end of the course there is NO WAY you will fail.

As for Werner, let me know if you're thinking about going with them and I'll give you the whole scoop.

-Willy

 

My son (who doesn't post on this board cuz he's too busy), went to school at Roadmaster in Columbus for 3 weeks (2/18 thru 3/5 or thereabouts).

He knew nothing about big trucks when he started and he finished top of his class in written tests for the permit and near the top in the driving skills. He had one bad day (the day before his final road test) where it seems that he forgot everything he had learned and everything was going wrong, but his driving instructor worked with him and finally told him to go rest....that he was just nervous. He got a good night's sleep on that Thursday night and was the first one tested on Friday morning and missed only two points on his final test. He got his CDL that afternoon and was good to go.

He was very happy with the instructors there. It's expensive, but it was worth it to him.

 

You want the scoop on Werner? Ok... you asked for it

When I was in school and all the recruiters were giving their pitches, I quickly came to the conclusion that they're all going to try to make their companies sound as absolutely wonderful as they possibly can. I had a few friends where were truckers, and was on the net in this forum, and there were TONS of very differing opinions.

So, I just decided to call the recruiters at all of these companies and ask them as many questions as I could think of to ask. I talked to my driving instructor at Roadmaster every day (his name was Artie and he was a pretty cool dude), and he was a big help in telling me what questions to ask them and why.

I spoke with two different Werner recruiters a number of times and asked them quite a few questions. At the end of the Roadmaster course, I'd decided to go with Werner because all of the answers to the questions I asked seemed honest, and I was able to speak with other people and they basically told me all the same things as the recruiters.

Once I told my wife about the decision, she got on the internet and found a LOT of very negative things being said about Werner and was very concerned about it. But for each of those things, it seemed like with a little thought and research, I could find a way to see it differently.

Here's an example: Werner's training consists of (among other things) 275 hours of driving with a trainer. Let's say you manage to average 8 hours of driving per day, that means that the training will last about 35 days. Add into that some time off for your trainer and a few days of not driving for one reason or another, and u can end up somewhere between 6 & 8 weeks out with a trainer. One of the things my wife read was from former students complaining about Werner screwing them out of training hours, making their training last much longer that it should have.

First of all, Werner is a BIG company and is publicly traded, which means they're subject to some pretty intense scrutiny from the SEC and stockholders to do things completely above board. It just didn't make sense that a company with so many employees and so many trucks out there would take the time to conspire to try to eek out a few extra hours from trainees.

Second, everything at Werner is done electronically (that's one of the main reasons I chose them). When your logs are kept in a computer it keeps you from being able to cheat them... but at the same time, it keeps them from being able to cheat you. And, sure enough, I have the ability to log in at any time and see exactly how many hours I've driven and how many I have left to go.

No one gets screwed. You do have to manage your time... if you forget to change your status to line 1 when you stop for a break, for instance, the computer will automatically put you on line 4. (You'll learn about Lines 1 thru 4 in trucking school.) But you can go back and send a request to correct it, and everything is then put back where it's supposed to be. I've kept very close track of my hours and haven't been cheated out of anything. Actually, it's been quite the opposite... my trainer has worked hard to get me as much driving time as we can possibly get in order to get me through the training, and the people in the Logs Department have been VERY cool about helping me understand time management and fixing corrections and errors.

There are other examples of negative things we've read or heard... Werner screwing you with payroll, Werner trying to convince you to buy into a leasing program that sucks, not giving drivers the time off they've earned or requested, leaving you stranded with breakdowns or repairs, etc.

But I just haven't seen any of that... my pay has been direct-deposited into my account on-time and accurately, no one's tried to sell or brow-beat me into anything, my trainer's been able to get any time off he's requested, and we've had two incidents with repairs... one was a flat tire on a trailer (fixed in about an hour) and the other was when our qualcomm went down (we kept paper logs until it was fixed, then faxed the logs in and all the hours were updated by the Logs Dept with no problems).

At this point, I haven't come across one driver who can say they've actually been screwed or stranded. The only complaint I've heard has come from a couple of drivers who say they don't get as many miles as they'd like to get. And since I'm still in training, I don't have any first-hand experience with that yet... although I will in a few weeks, so we'll see.

But my experience with Werner to this point is that they've done everything they said they'd do and everything has been pretty much what they said it would be. And at the end of the day, that's EXACTLY what I want out of an employer. Just tell me what the deal is and do what you say you're going to do, and I'll do the job I said I'd do when I signed on.

Hope this helps. I just read back through this and realized it's getting kind of LONG (sorry, man), but I can certainly elaborate more if you'd like.

-Willy

 

Best of luck, bro.